“Oh, my days…” I managed, nearly breathless.
“Eritopia,” Ramin replied. “I suppose the stars favor us today.”
“Calliope… Let’s head to Calliope. I just need some time to speak to our witches there, maybe even the Daughters. We’ll figure out a way to get me back without having you go back to Neraka—at least for a while, until we stop the ritual and break the Hermessi’s influence on the fae.”
We descended through the stardust stream, allowing it to swoosh us past countless other planets, until Eritopia opened up before us. The fuchsia-colored thread was made up of billions of particles of crystal dust. I could feel each one as we passed through it. The dust tickled senses I’d thought I’d left back in my body. Soon enough, we’d reach Calliope.
And I might get to save myself.
Vesta
Zeriel and my parents had come over to visit me in the sanctuary. I was still adjusting to the constant gut-wrenching feeling that their presence and their suffering gave me. I couldn’t stand watching them like this, but I couldn’t look away, either.
This time, however, they barely said a word to one another. And zero to me. I found the silence rather comforting. What more could they say, anyway? We all knew where our world stood. Three and a half million fae were affected by the Hermessi’s influence. Soon, it would be four million. Then five million, followed by the end, the greatest end to end all ends.
Seeley was present, as always, and he kept his mouth shut. I was allowed this brief comfort with the people I loved most in this world, even though I couldn’t touch them or tell them I was still here. The idea had been circulated among those present—after all, Vikkal had been clear: the soul is booted from the body, but we all die when the Hermessi’s influence is complete at five million fae. Of course, they didn’t know about the life-chains blackening, which I was pretty sure were, in fact, connected to the growing influence, regardless of the varied speeds with which they succumbed. I wondered if death would come with five million stricken fae or with all links blackened on my life-chain. Either way, it didn’t really matter, since I couldn’t communicate any of this to the living. They were still wondering where our spirits were, given that the Hermessi had yet to hit that reviled number. Were we still here? Were we perhaps asleep, with our physical forms, sealed inside the crystal casings?
I knew the answer all too well, for I was the living embodiment of a lingering spirit. I was also extra special, apparently, because I was one of the few who could see my Reaper. Seeley had referred to me as an anomaly, but I took it as a compliment. I was facing death right in the face, and I was in no mood to go. Without a body, I was also limited in my actions. Even so, I’d been able to convince Seeley to intervene and save my friends from his psycho colleague, Yamani. Therefore, I wasn’t entirely useless.
But I had a new target, now. I had to find a way to tell Zeriel, my parents, or anyone who’d be able to listen about everything I’d learned. I needed them to know that we were all still here, and that we were scared and lonely and in no way ready or willing to die. That we needed them to fight for us. To save us.
“How about this Reaper business, huh?” my dad asked no one in particular, his gaze settled on my glowing body. His grief was mine, too, but I had to give him credit: he didn’t show it as much as, say, my mother or Zeriel. My dad was the stern type who kept his emotions for private moments. This wasn’t one of them. Besides, what good would it do if he’d started pulling his hair out right here? I figured he was wise enough to suspect that I might still be able to at least hear him, somehow, and the last thing he wanted was to fuel my overblown angst—without even knowing it.
“What do you mean?” Zeriel replied, slightly overcharged. He’d been like this since I’d first fallen from Vikkal’s cut-and-spell trick—calm, for the most part, but always treading on the edge. My ethereal fingers were itching to touch him, but I doubted he’d feel anything. I couldn’t feel the floor I was standing on, barefoot.
“I just mean Reapers… the fact that they exist. That they do what they do, and not a single one of us knew about them until one revealed himself to us, with foul intentions.”
“Something tells me that Yamani fellow was a horrible exception,” Mom cut in, one hand resting on the crystal casing, just above my head. It was as close as she could get to touching me, and I wanted nothing more than to feel her warmth on my skin.
“Even so, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m still wrapping my head around the entire Reaper concept. All my life, I’d thought we just live and… well, die. That we’re concentrated energy that just moves on. Then, I remember the likes of Sherus, who once worked with ghouls and gave him souls,” Dad said, shaking his head slowly. “Death was something distant and mysterious. Knowing now that it functions on order and tasks, much like our world of the living… I don’t know. I’m baffled.”
“You and me both.” Zeriel sighed. “It’s even more astonishing to learn that, much like the Exiled Maras and the daemons of Neraka, Reapers could be seduced by the power of our souls. That they could feed on them. Destroy them…”
“But there are immediate repercussions for the Reapers, at least,” Dad mused, scratching his pale stubble. He’d rarely allowed himself to go unshaven for more than a day, yet, since my falling, the rough, grain-colored shadow on his jaw and chin had become a regular sight. “They become ghouls.”
“And they just get hungrier for souls,” Zeriel replied.
“True. But they’re no longer Reapers. Imagine being one, eating souls and getting away with it for centuries, if not millennia, on end,” Mom said, then shuddered at the thought. “Frankly, the existence of Reapers and their descent into ghouls isn’t even what scares me the most. It just answers some questions I’ve had since I was a child. No, what truly terrifies me is the fact that Death is an entity, that she orders these Reapers around, that she once stopped the first Hermessi ritual, and now, she’s holed up on this Mortis planet, somewhere… who knows where… while my daughter is languishing away in this…” She knocked on the crystal casing. “This thing.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. I could almost feel them, hot and burning with sorrow, tickling my skin. How unfair that my own parents had to witness my slow descent into death, long before their time came to even get close to the grand finale, so to speak.
Dad put an arm around her shoulders and held her close. He kissed her temple, closing his eyes for a moment, as if to stop his own tears from falling. “Our girl is a fighter,” he declared quietly. “She’s opposing this. I know she is.”
Zeriel couldn’t help but chuckle. “Vesta will probably flip off a Reaper before he takes her away.”
“I can agree with him,” Seeley muttered, clearly amused.
Even I was smiling, though I didn’t even realize it until I spotted my reflection in his night-sky eyes. “You won’t take me away. You know that, right?” I asked him.
“It won’t be up to me, Vesta,” Seeley said. “If they save you and your fellow fae before your time is up, I will be more than happy to stand back. But if your life-chain breaks, I will have no other choice.”
“I could—”
“And don’t tell me you could run away from me and linger on as a ghost until you find a new fae body, like Ben did. We destroyed those loopholes. No more tricks. You’ll be wandering between worlds, not belonging anywhere, unable to touch or speak to your loved ones, until a ghoul finds you and snacks on you. That is your future, Vesta, if you don’t allow nature to take its course.”
I was instantly deflated. Settling by Zeriel’s side, I chose to focus on him. My post-death options were too crappy. My pre-death options were blurry, at best, and depended on whether Taeral and his crew could find Death and get her to stop the ritual before it killed us all. The best I could do, right now, was focus on my fiancé… maybe even find a way to talk to him.
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” Seeley added, but I interrupted him before he could give me the it’s-what’s-best-for-you speech.
“I really don’t want to hear anything, to be honest,” I said firmly, then smiled down at Zeriel. “I would, however, like to be able to touch him one last time, and tell him how much I love him.”
Seeley would’ve said he had no power in this, because of the rules. But I didn’t expect him to do anything. I’d already understood that, and I had no intention of pleading with him to do anything. He’d saved my friends on Hellym. He’d done enough.
Zeriel couldn’t take his eyes off me. “Do you think she’s here? That she can hear us?”
“I am… I can,” I whispered.
“I hope so,” my mom said. “Because if she is, at least she knows how much we love her.”
“As long as her heart still beats, our daughter is here,” Dad replied, his brow furrowed. He was working so hard to keep himself together through all this.
“Good. I need her to hear us. I need her to know that we’re not stopping until we find a way to get her back,” Zeriel grumbled.
Instinctively, I reached out and let the back of my hand gently brush his sharp cheek. I’d done it before, but it had never sent sparks flying through me, like it did just now. It startled him, too. His skin was all goosebumps, and I was electrified.
I jumped back and covered my mouth to stifle a shocked gasp, while Zeriel straightened his back and widened his eyes at my parents.
“What is it?” Mom asked, clearly confused.
